Intellectual Property and Open Source

Book Description

"Clear, correct, and deep, this is a welcome addition todiscussions of law and computing for anyone -- even lawyers!" --Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School andfounder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society

If you work in information technology, intellectual property iscentral to your job -- but dealing with the complexities of thelegal system can be mind-boggling. This book is for anyone whowants to understand how the legal system deals with intellectualproperty rights for code and other content. You'll get a clear lookat intellectual property issues from a developer's point of view,including practical advice about situations you're likely toencounter.

Written by an intellectual property attorney who is also aprogrammer, Intellectual Property and Open Source helpsyou understand patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, andlicenses, with special focus on the issues surrounding open sourcedevelopment and the GPL. This book answers questions such as:

How do open source and intellectual property worktogether?

What are the most important intellectual property-relatedissues when starting a business or open source project?

How should you handle copyright, licensing and other issueswhen accepting a patch from another developer?

How can you pursue your own ideas while working for someoneelse?

What parts of a patent should be reviewed to see if it appliesto your work?

When is your idea a trade secret?

How can you reverse engineer a product without getting intotrouble?

What should you think about when choosing an open sourcelicense for your project?

Most legal sources are too scattered, too arcane, and too hardto read. Intellectual Property and Open Source is afriendly, easy-to-follow overview of the law that programmers,system administrators, graphic designers, and many others will findessential.